Lunchtime links: a delicious day unlike any in baseball history

Coming into September, the Red Sox and Braves had two of the best five records in the major leagues.

Both teams will sit out the postseason, undone by two of the biggest September collapses in history.

There have been more than 200,000 games in major league history, and never has the end of a regular season unfolded anything like what happened Wednesday in Baltimore, St. Petersburg and Atlanta. Even Houston was part of the storyline, though it did little to further the drama.

The Red Sox and Braves suffered wrenching, dream-dying losses on the final night of the season. The Rays and Cardinals, left for dead, live to see the postseason.

Move over Bobby Thomson: Evan Longoria became the second player in history to send his team into the playoffs on a walk-off home run on the final day of the regular season. (Chris O'Meara/AP)

Jonathan Papelbon took the mound for the Red Sox in the ninth inning at Baltimore with a 3-2 lead. The Red Sox were 76-0 when leading after eight innings. Papelbon retired the first two batters and still didn’t close the deal. They became the Dead Sox a few minutes later when the Rays polished off an epic comeback against the Yankees. Papelbon had converted 25 consecutive save opportunities before blowing two of the final four. (Peter Abraham, Boston Globe)

Let’s ponder the little things – some of them decisions made years ago – that led to a Red Sox collapse and a magical Rays run into the postseason. (Jon Paul Morosi, FoxSports.com)

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the Rays’ nine-game deficit in September was the largest by any team to make the playoffs in MLB history. The Red Sox did their part, and then some, by going 7-20 (.259) in September. That’s the team’s worst winning percentage in any calendar month since 1964. The Rays trailed 7-0 before rallying to win against a Yankees team that resembled a Triple-A outfit by game’s end because manager Joe Girardi had no reason to push his regulars. Elias notes the Rays are the first team to earn a postseason berth by overcoming a deficit of more than six runs in the regular-season finale. The 1995 Rockies overcame an 8-2 San Francisco lead to win the finale 10-9 and clinch a wild-card berth.

One out away from closing out a victory that would have forced a one-game playoff with the Rays, Jon Papelbon couldn't get it done. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

The easy part on Wednesday was dismantling the Astros 8-0 behind Chris Carpenter’s two-hitter. The hard part was waiting to see if the Braves could win and force a one-game playoff. (Bryan Burwell, St. Louis Post Dispatch)

Hunter Pence drove in the deciding run in a 4-3, 13-inning Phillies win against the Braves. Leading 3-2 in the top of the ninth, Braves rookie Craig Kimbrel couldn’t close the deal. In the final 20 days of the season, Elias notes, the Braves lost a major league-high three games in which they led in the ninth inning or later.Kimbrel sat at his own wake on Wednesday night. (Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports)